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Art history graduate receives international award for article

November 12, 2013

Art history graduate receives international award for article

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Kimberly Musial Datchuk, a doctoral candidate in art history, was awarded the International Award for Excellence at the fourth International Conference on the Image in Chicago from Oct. 18 to 19. She received the honor for her article, “Travail de panneau': The Effects of Early Film on Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Au cirque’ Series,” which she presented at the previous year’s conference. As part of the award, her article will be available open-access on the journal's website for one year, and Datchuk has been invited to attended the 2014 conference at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in Germany.

Datchuk’s awarding-winning article is part of a chapter of her dissertation, "Spectacular Maneuvers: Explorations of Sexual Deviancy and Early Film in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's 'Circus' Drawings." The article examines the development of movement in Toulouse-Lautrec's oeuvre and the corresponding scientific advancements regarding recording movement during the same time period. Her interest in Toulouse-Lautrec started while working toward her master’s degree at Penn State, when she went to the National Gallery to see the "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" exhibition. It was the first time she saw Toulouse-Lautrec's "Au cirque" drawings. She wrote her masters paper on four of the drawings. “My dissertation grew out of this work and considers the drawings’ sexuality, violence, movement, masculinity and animals, and how his approach to these topics changed during his career.”

Datchuk’s research interests include 19th-century European art, post-1945 American and European art, and the Northern Renaissance. Her forthcoming dissertation explores the connections between art, gender, sexuality and technology in Toulouse-Lautrec’s œuvre. In the fall of 2012, she received the Department of Art History's Dissertation Fellowship and departmental and college travel grants, which allowed her to travel to Paris and Albi, France, to research Lautrec. She credits her department and her adviser, Nancy Locke, for being so supportive throughout her studies.

Currently living in St. Albans, a town outside of Burlington, Vt., Datchuk is writing her dissertation and working part-time as a gallery assistant at Frog Hollow, the first state-recognized craft center in the nation.